


Devil's Snare

by elicitillicit



Series: Assorted Drabbles and Shorts [7]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Marauders' Era, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-24 00:01:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4897330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elicitillicit/pseuds/elicitillicit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Before Alice Longbottom was a name whispered as the other half of a pair (the Longbottoms, yes, tortured into insanity, St Mungo’s, batshit crazy), before she birthed Neville (who could have been the Boy who Lived but was thankful to just be a boy who lived through a war), and before she signed her wand to the service of her ministry (and her soul to the pursuit of equality, justice, and freedom), she was Alice Fawley. </p><p>And she was in love with Narcissa Black. </p><p>But, before any of that: </p><p>Alice Fawley was Narcissa Black’s best friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Devil's Snare

Before Alice Longbottom was a name whispered as the other half of a pair ( _the Longbottoms, yes, tortured into insanity, St Mungo’s, batshit crazy_ ), before she birthed Neville ( _who could have been the Boy who Lived but was thankful to just be a boy who lived through a war_ ), and before she signed her wand to the service of her ministry ( _and her soul to the pursuit of equality, justice, and freedom_ ), she was Alice Fawley.

And she was in love with Narcissa Black.

But, before any of that:

Alice Fawley was Narcissa Black’s best friend.

They’d grown up together, their parents had been in Slytherin together, they’d played with dolls and held tea parties and flown little toy brooms together, and they’d been the perfect little pureblood heiresses until Alice had gone and gotten herself sorted into Gryffindor.

Narcissa had avoided her for two weeks after the Sorting until Alice cornered her in a section of the library and informed her that she was still the same person and that the blood of friendship was thicker than the water of the womb.

 _No one can know_ , Narcissa had told Alice lowly. Andromeda had taken to hoarding pain potions in her wardrobe because word had leaked out to their parents that she’d been seen out and about with a Hufflepuff. A _Mudblood_ Hufflepuff.

Alice understood. Alice always understood.

* * *

Their first, second, third, and fourth years were spent in a blur of late-night library study sessions, early-morning picnics by the fringes of the Forbidden Forest, and giggly afternoons up in the Astronomy Tower, practising charms and transfiguring their homework into kittens. Or, rather, Alice would transfigure Narcissa’s potions assignments into snakes, which Narcissa would then transfigure into kittens.

“I can’t believe you hate snakes,” Alice would say, amused. “You must be the most unpatriotic Slytherin in _centuries_.”

Narcissa would sniff, cuddle a kitten close, and call Alice a bad word. That only made Alice guffaw, though, and Narcissa _loved_ making her laugh.

She’d always thought that all that Gryffindor fire always suited Alice; she was always laughing, always strong, always _bright_. In the cold and dark of the dungeon (especially during the winter), Narcissa would hold the memory of Alice’s face close to warm herself to sleep.

* * *

Narcissa wouldn’t exactly say that anything _changed_ in their fifth year. Things just – they just fell into place.

They had been walking back to the castle after a Hogsmeade visit just before Christmas. Narcissa had been happily munching on a chocolate bar as Irina Dolohov whined about how Claire Rosier was _stealing Alphard Black away from her_ (joke! Alphard didn’t even like witches) when a knot of red ahead of her separated into two distinct beings and her brain supplied _Longbottom_ while something in her chest gasped _Alice_.

Narcissa came to a dead halt as Alice stepped away from Frank Longbottom and glanced in her direction.

And froze.

Dolohov furrowed her brow in confusion ( _why are we stopping while we’re ankle-deep in slush?_ ) before catching sight of Alice and Longbottom. Her lips pulled up into a sneer and she caught at Narcissa’s elbow, jostling her arm and knocking her chocolate onto the ground. “Let’s go, Cissy. My nose isn’t numb enough to block the stench of _blood traitors_.”

Narcissa let Dolohov lead her away numbly, but all the feeling came back in the middle of the night when she’d just about jumped on Alice during their scheduled study time and threw up silencing charms around their hidden corner of the library. 

“ _Longbottom_ , Alice?” she’d shrieked, unattractively red and blotchy. “He’s an idiot! Well-meaning, yes, but an _idiot_! He couldn’t tell his left foot from his trachea!”

Alice had folded her arms stiffly and informed her that Frank was very good at transfiguration and DADA. Narcissa had thrown up her own in exasperation.

“He’s a clumsy oaf and his mother is a harpy!”

Alice, who’d already been speaking quietly, dropped her voice even lower. “I don’t think that you’re in any position to be comparing the kindness of mothers, Narcissa.”

Narcissa’s mouth snapped shut.

“What do you care if I’m going out with Frank, anyways? He’s an OK bloke and he _worships_ me.” Alice was glaring at the floor as she spoke, and her fingers were pressed so tightly into her upper arms that they were white.

“ _I_ worship you,” Narcissa had mumbled before she could stop it, and the words hung, loaded, in the space between them for a heartbeat. _Merlin_. She flushed and thought about taking them back, about blustering, about leaving abruptly and _never fucking looking at Alice Fawley again_ , but then the other girl looked up at her slowly, and something in her eyes flickered.

“I worship you, too,” she’d admitted, before leaning in to kiss Narcissa full on the lips.

 _Oh_.

* * *

In their sixth year, they took to spending a great deal more time together. _Alone_. 

Alice’s hands were in Narcissa’s hair and her lips were on her throat and she couldn’t breathe couldn’t think _couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t_ but Alice was murmuring into her pulse: _mine mine mine._

And as she clutched at her best friend, her lover, her fucking other half, she thought: _if my mother blasted Andromeda off the family tapestry for marrying a Mudblood, she will murder me where I stand_.

(But really, she mused, pupils blown and hands shaking in the dark of the forbidden forest, she didn’t give a shit.)

Narcissa ran her fingers across Alice’s shoulders and she didn’t need to see them to map the freckles on her skin. She tilted her head up and mouthed her heart to the stars: _if my blood is pure, let my love be also_.

* * *

It didn’t last, of course. 

When Narcissa went home that summer and blithely informed her parents that she would prefer not to marry Lucius Malfoy, she found herself breathless for an entirely different reason.

She struggled to pull oxygen through her lungs as her fists clenched in the weave of the Persian rug beneath her, and thought _Alice Alice Alice_ as she watched her mother’s shiny patent leather heels crunch onto the remains of the tea service that she’d knocked off the coffee table when she’d been writhing in agony. She coughed blood and her chest seized: _something is broken_ , she noted, and tried very hard to suppress the aftershocks of the curse.  

Druella Black’s wand dug painfully into the space between her youngest daughter’s shoulder blades. “Do you care to repeat what you just said, darling?”

When Alice burst into her compartment on the Hogwarts Express after three months of silence, she drew up short upon finding Narcissa surrounded by Parkinson, Dolohov, and her cousin Rosier, as well as a multitude of wedding magazines.

She’d glanced up at the intrusion, expression bland. “May we help you, Fawley?”

And Alice had understood: she’d seen the _I’m sorry_ and _I’m not brave_ and _I can’t do it_ and _it hurts_ and so she’d shaken her head mutely, closed the compartment door, and walked away.

 _I love you_.

* * *

The rest of their seventh year and the frantic interlude after it was documented in a string of short paragraphs in someone else’s story. It is sufficient to say that in that time, both women found something that they loved more than each other. 

And that was no small thing.

* * *

The war was over and Narcissa was having tea with Bellatrix in her drawing room when the Aurors came.

“Arrest?” Narcissa had bleated, refusing to budge from her protective (and shielded) stance in front of Draco’s cradle as a squad of hit wizards trampled over the remnants of their drawing room door. Her sister had been wrestled to the ground and was currently at the wrong end of a multitude of _incarcerous_ spells after a brief duel that had devastated half the room. Prodigious as Bellatrix was, even she wasn’t a match for a dozen Aurors who weren’t that worried about property damage.

One of the Aurors thrust a newspaper under her nose, expression grim. “Do you not get the _Prophet_ in Wiltshire?”

 _My husband takes it up to his study and I only read it the day after_ , she’d wanted to explain, but she took the paper and promptly wished she hadn’t.

 _Longbottoms. Tortured. St Mungo’s. No news yet, but the prognosis is grim_.

Bellatrix was hauled up and marched past her. The Aurors slammed the front door on their way out and she heard Lucius smash a vase in his rage. Draco whimpered in his blankets.

Narcissa Malfoy gazed at the moving picture of Alice Longbottom, waving cheerfully at her from beside her husband, and found that her heart could still break.


End file.
